The Supreme Court on Wednesday told the petitioner that the demand for mandatory rotation of seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Parliament and state assemblies was a matter for the legislature, not the judiciary.
Declining to interfere with an Allahabad High Court judgment, the bench upheld the validity of Section 9 (1)(c) of the Delimitation Act, 2002, which requires reserved constituencies to be identified in areas where the proportion of SC/ST residents is comparatively large. The petition was filed by Jagdish Singh, an elector of the 191-Kadipur assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur district, which has remained reserved for SC candidates for nearly seven decades. The plea argued that the absence of rotation violated the right to equality and other fundamental rights, including Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Constitution, and restricted voters to choosing candidates only from the SC community.
But the bench questioned the assumption that voters in constituencies with a larger SC population would necessarily vote along caste lines and that reservation in such seats was therefore unnecessary. The provision does not mandate periodic rotation of such constituencies. The court also observed that whether identifying reserved constituencies on the basis of a higher concentration of SC/ST residents perpetuates caste divisions was a question for the legislature to consider and could not by itself render the existing law unconstitutional. He also contended that the arrangement benefited a handful of families rather than the larger community and sought a rotation mechanism similar to the one provided for panchayats and municipalities under Articles 243D and 243T. “This is a good season of protests, naarebaazi (sloganeering). So, this is also a good ground for protest. “That proceeds on the idea that a majority community will vote on community or caste lines. They may not vote on community and caste lines. The high court cannot judicially pronounce on a democratic choice. That is for the voters to decide,” it added.
